Read this article on bsc.news A Polygon (@0xPolygon) Labs team member has proposed a hard fork of the Polygon PoS mainnet to recover about 70.49 million $POL linked to two separate hacks targ
A Polygon (@0xPolygon) Labs team member has proposed a hard fork of the Polygon PoS mainnet to recover about 70.49 million $POL linked to two separate hacks targeting Polymarket (@Polymarket) and Binance (@binance).
The proposal is due to be presented at Polygon's Protocol Governance Call on November 5, according to DeFi Prime. Activation would still require approval through Polygon's governance process, with the activation block and client version yet to be set, TechFlow reported.
The plan would transfer native POL from five blocked attacker addresses to recovery addresses designated by the two companies. According to TechFlow, about 23.86 million POL is related to Polymarket and roughly 46.63 million to Binance. The operation would zero out the balances of the affected addresses and credit an equivalent amount to the recovery addresses, leaving POL's total supply unchanged.
The tokens are worth about $6.5 million at POL's October 29 price of $0.0924, PANews reported. DeFi Prime's summary of the proposal says it identifies four Polymarket-linked addresses and one Binance-linked address, and that the list of addresses is closed.
Polygon block producers have already added the addresses to a transaction block list at the affected firms' request, according to The Defiant, as relayed by Cryptonews. That keeps the tokens in place but offers no way to return them. The fork would reassign balances without the holders' signatures rather than reverse earlier transactions.
Before the fork, Binance and Polymarket would have to show Polygon Labs that they control the recovery wallets and confirm this in writing, Cryptopolitan reported. The same report said the authors consider about two weeks workable to build the new client software and test it on Polygon's Amoy testnet if the plan is approved.
The proposal itself calls the move an "extreme action" that should not be repeated commonly, according to the Cryptonews summary of The Defiant's report. It rejects a permanent freeze-and-recover power over user funds and argues intervention is justified in this case by a publicly acknowledged theft, traceable funds, a request from the victim, blocking by every block producer and a sufficiently large amount.
Further conditions include published post-mortems consistent with the onchain record, continued blocking of the addresses by all producers and a fresh balance snapshot before activation. Altering balances on a live network also raises questions about blockchain immutability, a point TechFlow noted in its coverage of the governance debate.
The proposal remains at an early stage. Whether the recovery goes ahead, and when, depends on the outcome of governance discussions and further technical decisions.
DeFi Prime: Polygon proposal seeks hard fork to recover 70.49M POLTechFlow: Polygon Community Proposes Hard Fork to Recover Approximately 70.49 Million POLCryptopolitan: Binance and Polymarket could reclaim $6.5M in blocked POL via fork
